I eat the serving size of natural peanut butter and I believe it to be fine. It has good fats but if you eat too much it is heavy so I only do the 2 tablespoons.
There is no real definition as to what 'clean eating' is. For me, I'd say if you can read the ingredients on the label, the food is probably clean! If you still want to eat peanut butter and are trying to eat clean, I'd definitely say peanut butter is fine as long as it's a natural kind.
2 tablespoons of Jif peanut butter, for example, contains:
16g of fat (2.5% is saturated fat)
7g of protein
7g of carbs
2g of sugar
In a previous post last week you said "I'm going to try cutting out sugar and junk." So if you want to cut out sugar, you might want to stay with the all-natural peanut butter. If you go with an all-natural (just peanuts) peanut butter, you won't have the sugar, but all the other nutritional info is about the same. Oil sometimes settles at the top of all natural peanut butter and you may need to stir it. In general peanut butter is a good source for monounsaturated fats.
Yes, the calories will be the same whether you buy natural peanut butter or the sugar filled stuff. I don't know if I've ever had the sugar filled stuff because when I was a child (I'm nearly 40 now), my mom always used to buy the stuff ground in the store and then I just kept buying the stuff that is just peanuts or peanuts + salt.
And yeah, I have no idea what people mean when they say they 'eat clean' because it seems to have morphed from when I first heard it 20 years ago. Every diet book seems to use 'eat clean' as their way of eating these days.
Look at the ingredients- if the only ingredient is peanuts and you have to keep it in the fridge, then it is clean.
But, forget peanut butter, try the all natural almond butter. It takes about a week to get used to, but now I find it so much more delicious. It is rich, creamy and flavorful.